And now, indeed, came the Opportunity of the true Industrious Apprentice, the hitherto calm and languid-looking, but, in verity, valorous, and vigilant, and virile ARTHTUR. Whereof, to be sure, he made abundant use, burgeoning forth into full blossom with astonishing suddenness, seizing Opportunity by the forelock with manly promptitude, and gaining golden opinions from all sorts of people; so that, after brief probation, he slipped, by general acclaim, into that very premier place so strangely, suddenly, and intempestively abdicated by the Idle Apprentice, GRANDOLPH. Concerning the latter, the latest reports are not reassuring. Like his celebrated prototype of fable, the ill-fated "Don't Care," he runneth a chance of being "devoured by lions"! At least he appears to have sought the company of those parlous beasts in their _native Afric wilds_. We hear that "the lions kept him tucked up one night," which same news (--gathered from a diurnal intituled the Johannesberg _Star_--) hath a fearsome and ill-boding sound. That he is--for the time at least--in every sense "tucked up," is only too obviously true. Peradventure he may yet think the better of it, correct his Frothy Distemper and Vagrant Disposition, and (as the agonising advertisements have it) return to his friends that all may be forgiven and much forgotten! But the last accounts of him picture him as lying languidly asprawl upon a Mausoleum in Mashonaland, _playing dice with himself!_ The tomb would indeed appear to be, in the sombre words of the Mystick Poet:-- "The vault of his lost Ulalume," the runic-sounding word, "Ulalume," being taken perchance as the African synonym for "Reputation." Whether the cheering word _Resurgam_ will ever be appropriate to _that_ Tomb remaineth to be seen. But it would appear only too plain that GRANDOLPH (in the words of the aforesaid SHAFTESBURY) "hath been a great frequenter of the woods and river-banks, where he hath consum'd abundance of his breath, suffer'd his Fancy to evaporate, and reduc'd the vehemence both of his Spirit and Voice." In short, that the erst ambitious and aspiring GRANDOLPH is still content, for the time at least, to play the part of _The Idle Apprentice_. * * * * * [Illustration: THE IDLE AND THE INDUSTRIOUS APPRENTICE. (_A long way after Hogarth._)] * * * * * "WHYS"--WISE AND OTHERWISE. (_BEING QUEER QUERIES._) [Illustration] I wonder why, whene'er a four- Wheeler advances to a door, (A common thing on Britain's shore,) I wonder why, At once some aged man will stand And stare until its inmates land, As if enchained by something grand, Or weird, or high. I wonder why the powers that mend The streets should root them up, and rend The roads with giant pipes on end And bricks awry, Just when we turn to town again; Though nothing stirred while West Cockayne Lay waste--a huge, deserted lane-- I wonder why.